Man, what a pain! For difficulty this rivaled that pesky PS2p I built… though to be fair a lot of it was my own fault. First I routed 50% of the case wrong, then I fried some LED’s, then I toasted and had to replace the TIA, but I finally got it done:

        

Yes, an amazing spring-loaded flip-up screen! Flip it up and sunlight (or lamplight, candlelight, glowing toxic waste etc…) bounces off a reflector and illuminates the screen. Click it down and the standard white LED’s kick it and light it traditionally. Either way you can’t loose! (Unless you drop it on concrete, then it’s probably doomed)

 This was a feature I envisioned over 4 years ago for a portable Atari but only now did I manage to squirt it out. For the whole story on this things long history and how it was built click here.

I mentioned wiring a cartridge slot to a Radica mini-Genesis a few weeks back… and now the SEGA EXODUS, a portable Sega Genesis, is done!

To see how this…..                goes to this….

  ….VIOLA!—>  

…read the amazing story on the Sega Exodus page!

This is in regard to what portables I have available/will be available soon:

1) Sega Exodus (see below): A portable Genesis that runs off 4 AA’s and has a 3″ TFT active-matrix screen. Early January.

2) Atari 2600 “Vagabond 2000”: The finally complete version of the original Vagabond design. It’s going to have a really neat feature (that I hope works:) Early January

…and that’s pretty much it. I have been devoting 90% of my (work) time to finishing Port Washington, which as of January 1st, 2005 will have been in active production for 3 years! So please understand how I REALLY need to get it finished, requiring a slight break from my portable-building. Once I cut that particular albatross from my neck (fun literary reference for you there) I can get back to portables and other projects.

Remember, I’ve got an entire BOOK coming out in February regarding portable-building. It’s a step-by-step guide allowing you to make a portable NES, SNES, Atari 2600 or PSone. Even “nOObs” and non-electrical whizzes can use it! Expanded details and such coming soon, for now you can check it out and even pre-order the thing on Amazon.

You can also join the Forums for some fun portable-building action!

Hey, have you seen those Radica Genesis things at Best Buy? It’s your typical cheap game thing… a bunch of Genesis games in a small little fake “Genesis” that takes 4 AA’s and plugs into your TV. Well, it was only $25 so I bought one and ripped it to shreds. Inside I found a circuit board with a cheapy ROM (read-only memory, the game) chip as well as a bunch of other circuitry.

“Wow!” I thought “This is pretty much a really small Genesis. It may be possible to hook up a cartridge connector…”

And guess what – it was! It took some “deductive wire checking” but I got it after a few hours.

(This wasn’t as hard to solder as it may look)

I don’t see why these companies don’t SPLURGE and put cartridge slots on these “TV games” things… though this slot cost me like $10 (new) so maybe that’s why, it’d increase the cost of the TV game thing significantly. The almighty dollar!

Naturally I’m going to make a portable Genesis now. I really like the Genesis, I played it a lot more than the SNES (sorry) In fact I recently hooked my Genesis back up in the living room! Some of you may remember that there WAS a portable Genesis released back in 1995 called the “Nomad”. Granted it was pretty cool but had a few drawbacks:

1) Took like 6 or 8 batteries and the battery pack stuck out the back (Jack!) This should only take 4.
2) Did NOT have an active-matrix TFT display screen (So it was a little blurry)
3) Did NOT have a really cool name like mine will. The Sega EXODUS!

Now, isn’t that cooler than “Nomad”? (And it’ll allow the “making of” story to have Photoshopped Charlton Heston gimmicks) Look for the Sega Exodus AND a new Atari in early January! (And of course they’ll be for sale)

Believe it or not but I have now cut a trailer for my long belabored independent film Port Washington. This has been my “other” project (aside from the portables) for almost 3 years now. Though we filmed 80% of it in the summer of 2002 it’s taken a LONG time to get the post-production done (since it’s just me for editing, FX, sound, etc) That said, even with all this footage laying around I could never figure out how to make a trailer for the film.

However the other day while eating lunch at McDonald’s of all places I had an inspiration as to how to make the trailer. I assembled it that same afternoon and now it’s available for download. Check the Port Washington movie page for details!

You’ve probably heard of I Robot the iMac and I Heart Huckabees, but what about iPowerWeb?

Well, they’re my Internet Site Provider and they’re pretty cool! See, last week when this site got Slashdotted a whole mess of people checked my site out and it put quite a strain on it. Thankfully iPowerWeb was there to help keep the site on its feet (after a brief hiccup when it went down) allowing it to stay online and not become a “dot com” casuality.

So if you’re hankering for a spread to plunk down your website on, why not check them out?

In other news, the PS2p has been spoken for, so yeah, consider it sold. I’m not building anymore but as previously stated I do have a book coming out (see link below) that allows you to build you own portables, even if you don’t have access to fancy-schmancy CNC machines!